The Growing Threat of the Kassam Unguided Rockets.

 

                                    By Dr Azriel Lorber     

 

• The Kassam family of Palestinian home made terror rockets was designed to harass Israel’s civilian population where cross border incursions by suicide bombers proved difficult.
• The rockets are extremely simple and as yet are not too effective. Still, they are able to hit major Israeli towns.
• The design is based on “Kitchen Technology”, and on commercially available raw materials.
• The Hamas would like to see its terror rockets fulfilling the same strategic role as the Hizbullah’s rocket force in Southern Lebanon.
• Improvements in quality, reliability and lethality are feasible, but at the cost of making the production infrastructure less covert and more vulnerable. 

 

Ostensibly aimed against the Israeli “Occupation of Palestinian Territory”, the ongoing Palestinian Intifadah (Uprising) targets Israeli civilians within Israel proper, rather than Israeli military targets within the “Occupied Territories”. The Palestinian major instrument of terror is the suicide bomber, used as a human “smart bomb” to zero on and kill Israeli civilians in busses, supermarkets, coffee shops and religious meetings. The success of this tactic is assured wherever the close proximity and lack of physical barriers between Israeli and Palestinians allows easy infiltration of Palestinians into Israel proper.

 

Where effective physical barriers do exist (such as around the Gaza Strip) the ability of the Palestinian terror organizations to launch suicide attacks into Israel proper is severely curtailed. To overcome this difficulty, the Palestinians have traded maneuverability for firepower, so to speak. Their home made terror rocket, dubbed “Kassam” and fired from within Palestinian held territory, come in lieu of the suicide bomber, yet with the same objective, namely to maximize Israeli civilian casualties.

 

The worldwide proliferation of artillery rocket technology brought about successful attempts to produce them in makeshift local plants operated by various terror groups. No reliable data exists on production and firing accidents, or even duds, but it is estimated that about two hundred such rockets were successfully fired and this number is sufficient to give headaches to the decision makers on the receiving end. These rockets do not require heavy barrels (but only a couple of lightweight launching rails, see Fig. 1) and thus are easy to transport and conceal. Under suitable condition, even the relatively short range of these weapons is not detrimental if appropriate targets are close enough. The terrorist organizations however are constantly striving to increase their range. For one it will give them more flexibility in choosing their targets or their firing points. Secondly, the potentially longer range can be traded for heavier payloads to shorter ranges.

 

 

Fig 1.  A Kassam (probably Mk. 2) Rocket at Launch

 

             The following map shows Sderot and Ashkelon, two towns in the south of Israel, and their geographical relation to the Gaza Strip, home to some of the most virulent terrorist organizations in the Middle East.

 

 

            These Palestinian terror organizations are constantly working to improve their products' range and payload. The initial effort in this field, the Kassam-1, had a short range of couple of kilometers. Design and production were later established also in the Palestinian West Bank but the wide scale effort by the IDF (Operation Defense Wall) after the 2002 Passover atrocity effectively brought this to a halt. The Gaza Strip terrorists in the meantime produced two new types of rockets – see table below:

 

           

It should be remembered that some of these numbers are best effort estimates based on a variety of considerations. Another facet of the Palestinian effort is the technical part that is interesting in itself and we will discuss it now.

 

The propellant in these rockets is based on a 60/40 mixture of Potassium Nitrate and sugar. The final solid fuel grain is of a square cross section (see fig. 2), burning both from the outside and the inside. This grain is sized so that its diagonal fits into the inside diameter of the motor casing. The aft bulkhead, containing the nozzles, is then screwed on and a few spot welds are applied to prevent unscrewing. At best this is a dangerous procedure but apparently they do get away with it.

Fig.2   A Solid Fuel Grain for A Kassam Rocket

 

The early rockets had a single exhaust nozzle but all later products are equipped with seven nozzles (see Fig. 3). There are two possible reasons for preferring this arrangement: for one, several nozzles diminish the effects of inaccuracies in production of the nozzle, thus contributing to the accuracy of the trajectory. Secondly, it is easier to produce smaller nozzles by direct drilling with no need for (relatively) complicated turning on a lathe. It is interesting to note that these nozzles are not canted (like in the Katyusha rockets) and thus no roll is imparted to these rockets. However, such a modification will require considerable beefing of the launchers and what's more, complicate production. It seems that ease of production is a paramount consideration

Fig 3.  The Seven Nozzle Configuration on A Kassam Rocket

 

Apparently, the earlier multi-nozzle rockets had screwed-on nozzles (see Fig. 4, depicting the location of a broken-off nozzle after impact) but again, probably in order to simplify production, now the nozzles are directly drilled in the rear bulkhead. The material is plain steel and because of the short burn time – on the order of one second – nozzle throat erosion is insignificant.

Fig. 4   The Rear End of A Kassam Rocket With One Nozzle Missing

 

While in terms of classical rocketry the whole design is less than efficient (it is doubtful if this motor produced an Isp (a measure of the efficiency of a rocket motor) of more than 130 seconds, compared to at least 200 seconds for a "regular" motor, it does serve its purpose.

 

The warhead is composed of a simple metal shell. The explosive is a mixture of Urea Nitrate and TNT in various ratios, depending mostly on the current availability of TNT that is smuggled in or taken from old military warheads. While again the Urea Nitrate is not an ideal explosive, it can be obtained (like the Potassium Nitrate mentioned above) from suppliers of commercial fertilizers. The fuse is a simple device based on an empty small arms cartridge filled with an explosive booster material operating against a spring-loaded nail. No "safe & arm" mechanism is employed – but it works. Furthermore, there were efforts to improve the lethality of the warheads by equipping them with a nose probe that will enable them to explode several inches above ground.

 

There are no technical barriers to the moderate scaling-up of both the size and the range of these devices. Admittedly, the real performance of these rockets (range and accuracy) is probable a mystery to the Palestinians themselves since the only firing range they do have is towards the sea. Thus the exact descriptions of fall of shot locations, provided in the news media, probably help the Palestinians quite a lot, by providing range and deviation information. It can be safely assumed that it is only a question of time before such rockets with increased range, and possibly better accuracy, will materialize.

           

While artillery rockets are not the only terror weapons used by the Terror organizations, from their point of view, they do have some advantages, when compared with other weapons. They are simpler to operate than mortars, have the long reach that mines, by definition, do not have and after firing, their simple launchers can in fact be abandoned. Furthermore, they do not require suicidal volunteers and no amount of security guards will stop them.

         

The major terror group involved in manufacturing and firing the Kassam family of rockets is the Hamas. The strategic role that the Hamas sees for its rockets is not unlike that of the Hizbullah rockets along the Israeli – Lebanese border. The Hizbullah brandish its Iranian supplied rockets, which can hit Israeli metropolitan areas like Haifa, as a sort of strategic deterrence, allowing it the freedom to harass Israeli targets near the border with impunity. There is little doubt that the Hamas would like to see its own rocket force fulfilling the same role along the perimeter of the Gaza strip, and in the future, perhaps along the borders of the promised Palestinian state.         

           

One ray of hope lies in the fact that while these are terror weapons they are as yet too primitive to be more than of nuisance value, although admittedly with a definite potential to become a real threat. This however will require better performance and especially more numbers, in turn entailing better equipped production facilities, considerable capital outlay and extensive testing which can be detected and acted upon. Monitoring such an effort, coupled with a quick introduction of suitable, active countermeasures may nip this threat in the bud.